TITLE Counter-Conduct; The Architecture of Fools in the city of Nowa Huta AUTHOR Charles Drozynski POSTAL ADDRESS Cardiff University, Welsh School of Architecture, King Edward VII Ave, Castle, Cardiff CF10 3NB EMAIL [email protected] PHONE +44 (0)29 2087 6097 AFILIATIONS University of Kent; Kent School of Architecture and University of Cardiff; Welsh School of Architecture KEY WORDS ‘The Lords Ark’; ‘Nowa Huta’; ‘Counter-conduct’; ‘Architecture’; ‘Foucault’; ‘Communism’ WORD COUNT 10066
ABSTRACT
During Communism in the second half of the 20th Century the ‘analytical space’1 of Polish cities was dominated by the architectural intent of creating a new type of human: ‘homo-sovieticus2. Any distancing from the prescribed mode of behaviour that would create this entity could be subject to the authorities’ intervention. In spite of this places for Counter-conduct against the prescribed manner of behaviour were produced.
1 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: the birth of the prison (New York: Vintage Books, 2012)
2 Aleksander Zinoviev, Homo-sovieticus (London: Paladin Grafton Books, 1986)
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The paper is based on Michel Foucault’s Theories on ‘Heterotopias’3 and ‘Analytical spaces’4. The paper will engage with these to explore conduct and counter-conduct in spatial terms in the environment of Soviet reality in Poland, concentrating on the city of Nowa Huta.
This paper explores the way in which the principle of creating fluid and irregulated heterotopias worked in the framework of a regimented and structured architectural language of the Soviet influence. It investigates the political and architectural situation of the Eastern Block in the 20th century and Nowa Huta in particular as an example of typical Soviet urban planning. It also analyses examples of ways that Polish people (in particular those that lived in Nowa Huta) engaged in counter conduct. This analysis focuses on an architectural example that fostered countering the conduct of the regime: The church of the Lord’s Ark.
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Introduction
The second half of the twentieth Century (1945-1989) in Central Europe yielded an unprecedented totalitarian governance of the state. The aim of that governance was to convert each citizen into a construct ripe for the highest expectations of economical productivity dictated by the Soviet hegemony. Any disappointment of this expectation, even the slightest deviation of behaviour from that way of being, might have been considered as inappropriate for a modern persona and would signify a necessity of violent intervention. In one of the Central European states – Poland, a country immersed in an atmosphere of control and invigilation, cases of acting upon dissatisfaction with this style of governance eventually led to dissent. In 1980 cases of unrest culminated in strikes, in major factories, which are associated with the end of Communism in Poland. In the case of this progression from a Communist to a Democratic state the role of the Catholic Church was that of a facilitator of the resistance. The Church aided and supported activities which went beyond the dictatorship of the authorities.
I am focussing herein on an example of, what Michel Foucault would refer to as, counter-conduct5 in Poland during Communism, acting against the city of Nowa Huta, an ideal example of a Soviet ‘’Utopia’’6, by erecting a church. Nowa Huta was a place designed to develop a level of attunement of its inhabitant’s bodies to Communist ideology. I am analysing the church of ‘’the Lord’s Ark’’ (a church erected in Nowa Huta against the directives of the Communist governmentality) and considering it to be a materialisation of a space in which the
3 Michel Foucault, ‘’Of other spaces’’, Diacritics, Vol. 16, No 1, (1968) pp. 22-27
4 Foucault, 2012 5 Michel Foucault, Security. Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France, 1977-1978 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
6 Leszek Sibila and Maciej Miezian ed. Nowa Huta – Architectura I tworcy miasta idealnego; Niezrealizowane projekty (Krakow: Muzeum Historyczne Miasta Krakowa, 2007)
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idealised construct of a new Soviet existence was denied. This space will hence be considered as one erected as a corporealisation of ‘’counter-conduct’’ (an act of being in space ‘’differently’’7 than what was expected) being at the same time a place, ripe for sustaining further practices of a similar nature. Foucault describes this understanding of conduct as a signifier of a modality of expressing dissatisfaction. The act is that of struggle with what is expected of an individual. It is actualised within the framework of what is not explicitly forbidden. It describes a modality of behaviour that explores new, creative ways of acting in spaces which bypass the prescribed normativity of the public space. As Marit Rosol writes, it is a diffuse form of resistance and a freedom to act ‘’otherwise’’8. On the other hand counter-conduct is a reactive mechanism that exists on the periphery of power structures. Foucault also recognised spaces for this type of conduct by naming them ‘’heterotopias’'9.
I am examining the space of ‘’the Lord’s ark’’ as part of a mechanism fostering identity exploration which was different than the Soviet intent and therefore being counter-conductive. This mechanism was grounded in forms of a literal pastoral power, present in the Polish culture for centuries before Soviet hegemony, and reinforced through its contestation with Communism. I am considering the fluidity of the irregulated heterotopias as Foucault’s ‘‘Ship of Fools’’10 sailing on the regimented and orderly philosophy of Soviet hegemony. This paper presents the Soviet aspect of the Eastern hegemony over Poland and the way in which the Heterotopian nature of the metaphorical ‘’Ship of Fools’’ managed to slip away from the constraints of visibility and counter the conduct of a Communist collaborator.
The research presented in this paper was gathered via an interrogation of a historical archive of architectural documentation in Crakow which holds information of the Communist development of Nowa Huta at the time. I have also interviewed a number of people who lived in the city at the pinnacle of Communism. Together with the literature review I have analysed the available information from the point of architectural history and theory and the field of international political studies.
This paper is divided into six sections. The first outlines the relevant literature by Foucault including: ‘Security. Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France, 1977-1978’ focussing on his discussion on Counter-conduct (which, in Foucault’s description, is a way of acting that results in countering the objectives of the governmentality and developing a different agenda than that set out by the authorities); ‘Of other spaces’ (‘Des Espaces Autres’) looking at the notion of spaces for acting differently than expected, Foucault named those: Heterotopias; ‘History of Madness’ (‘Folie et déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique’) which
7 Foucault 2007 8 Marit Rosol, ‘’On resistance in the post-political city: conduct and counter-conduct in Vancouver’’, Space and Polity, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2014) pp 70-84
9 Michel Foucault, ‘’Of other spaces’’, Diacritics, Vol. 16, No 1, (1968) pp. 22-27
10 Michel Foucault, History of Madness (London: Routledge, 2009)
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introduces the metaphor of the ‘’Ship of Fools’’ to elaborate on the functioning of heterotopias in architecture; and ‘Discipline and Punish: the birth of the prison’ (‘Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la Prison’) that elaborates on the notion of surveillance in society. The second presents the philosophical underpinnings of architecture in the Soviet environment. The third section presents the situation of Polish culture before the Soviet intervention. The fourth is introducing the hegemonic aspect of the Communist presence in Poland and concentrating on the city of Nowa Huta. The fifth section presents the position of the Catholic Church in Poland in respect to power circulation. The last describes the church of the Lord’s Ark as an example of performative Counter-conduct in architectural terms.
The ship of fools
The specificity of the church building as a raft for the unusual in the sterility of Communist governance aided the development of abnormal participation in power structures (from the point of view of the government). A similar concept of a space, one which would denote its presence on an ephemeral basis, and that would carry within it inhabitants seeking shelter from a homogenous world, was introduced in 1961 in Foucault’s book entitled ‘History of Madness’. As he wrote: ‘’A new object made its appearance in the imaginary landscape of the Renaissance, and it was not long before it occupied a privileged place there, this was the Ship of Fools’’11. The notion of the ‘’Ship of fools’’ related to the state of madness and alienation from society. The ship held all the people who, due to the state of their physical and mental health were expelled from the cities they inhabited. It was a place where Foucault’s counter-conduct, towards established port cities, was the unwritten law. This was regulated solely by its undesirable inhabitants. Torn from the generality of society the ship was free to develop its own moral frameworks alien to any port that allowed it in. The space on the boat is a concept that was later articulated in Foucault’s description of ‘’Heterotopias’’ (an idea that he developed in the 70s and presented during a lecture of March 1967)12. Heterotopias are ‘‘sacred’’ or ‘’forbidden’’ spaces that present the negative attitude of the society towards the counter-conductive events that they envelop13. Rejected from the totality of public life they are places for ‘‘a state of crisis’’, different from the generally accepted norm. They were inversions of the world that worked according to the generally accepted economy of common sense serving nothing more than the desires of the bodies within them. These spaces would be torn away from the social contract and hence would be most likely not secured by sanctioned physical boundaries of designed architecture.
Heterotopias, as spaces for denial and rejection were clear representations of counter-conduct in architectural terms and were implicitly illegal. They were places in which an interpretation and re-appropriation of
11 Ibid. p8 12 Foucault (1968)
13 Ibid. 4
normative activity were possible because they were not policed. Their location, permeability and relationship with the public would determine the quality of the statement which they manifested hinting on the spaces interaction with politics.
In the Soviet context heterotopias were places for exile for the people willing to explore the part of the self which was not constantly under the pressure to produce for the Communist economic market–. This was a place for the development of identity as it was without the constraints of the Soviet empire. In an atmosphere of a weak definition of the juridical flow created a situation where one could unwittingly find accused of a crime. As the Polish saying goes: ‘’show me a man and I will find a paragraph [in the legal code of conduct] on him’’14. In this atmosphere, the safest place to relax from being a homo-sovieticus which was to become the modern Soviet citizen was in an irregulated heterotopia. Here I am considering the operation of what I am naming a performative heterotopia (borrowing Jessica Kulynych’s definition of an explicit participation in a political debate)15.
Michiel Dehaene and Lieven De Cauter wrote that heterotopias are a reinvention of the everyday and ordinary and a new construct16. They consider them in terms of territorialised or owned: oikos, meaning: the economic spaces as opposed to politicised space or agora. For Dehaene and De Cauter the public space is a dynamic and fluid mosaic of spaces which are owned by their inhabitants and each time it is inhabited a new heterotopia bubbles up. Heidi Sohn, on the other hand, analyses heterotopias from a linguistic point and discusses them as locations of malignant developments within an organic body17. Sohn described such places as signifiers of the limits of public normality. For James Faubion, any city lends itself to forming a utilitarian relationship between its political and heterotopic spaces18. He notes that all the mentioned examples which Foucault explores (honeymoon, children’s play space, old people’s home, graveyard, theatre, cinema, libraries, museums, fairs, carnivals, holiday camps, saunas, models, brothels, ships) are spaces without which no city would be able to function. He also narrates heterotopias as descriptors of the societies which enable their existence. He sees those spaces as ones for ambiguity and therefore, spaces ripe for cultural tendencies to unravel and develop.
The Ship of Fools in water acts like an inhabitant of architecture. It has its own internal structure, trying to negotiate forms of heterotopian place-making within the dominant social structuring of space. If the metaphorical water had no structural forces the vessel would be completely free to determine its own order and would be liberated from all external hegemony. The Ship’s choice of routes would flow only from within, it
14 Well known Polish Maxim, apparently associated with Andrzej Wyszynski 15 Jessica Kulynych, ‘’Performing Politics: Foucault, Habermas, and Postmodern Participation’’, Polity, Vol. 30, No. 2 (1997) pp315-146
16 Michel Dehaene and Lieven De Cauter ed., Heterotopia and the city; public space in a postcivic society (London: Routledge, 2009)
17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 5
would be prisoner solely to its own desires. The Ship of Fools was an attempt of Counter-conduct. Such an act cut off life from the knowledge flow of the society and would not likely necessitate an alternate architecture.
However, the Ship has to obey forces deriving from the physical properties of the water that allows buoyancy. The boat has to adopt an ethical framework of determining its route through space with reference to the logic of the water. The logic encompasses the direction of currents, location of ports and speed of winds that configure the Ship. This logic gives the Ship certain possibilities and forms its course forcing it to adjust its route or position with respect to the situation. The rigour of the water tries to overwhelm the irregular motions of the vessel. The logic of space confines the ship like a pastoral mode of governmentality to negotiate its motion according to the silent physicality of the water.
This paper argues that architecture may act like a metaphorical ship of fools but at the same time it can be understood as the water which floats it. Architecture divides space, and the deriving organisation enables the inhabitant to use the different places, which were formed, in different ways. The syntax (distribution and order) of those spaces will inform the architectural language. Through the knowledge that the inhabitant gained and because of the organisation that architecture enforces, the inhabitant cannot use the space in an unlimited way. They are confined to think and make choices considering the possibilities that the architecture presents. They are also placed in a space, in which the level of visibility was predetermined. Heterotopias in this case, would be a reaction, as Counter-conduct would be one to the power structures. In this sense there is an intimate relation between conduct of conduct and counter-conduct as Carl Death rightfully describes19.
Foucault was always sensitive about ‘’otherness’’ in the networks of power. His studies of mechanisms of control and experience of life in unstable political atmospheres lead him to describe a specific tactic of acting upon disagreement20. Counter-conduct will here be considered as an act of being a non-Soviet construct without an intent to open dissention and revolt. Those events were, as Foucault put it, ‘’[c]onflicts of conduct on the borders and edge of the political institution’’21. Locating such acts on the periphery of political structures would signify a level of risk (as discussed by Erin Bishop and Furedi Frank), if such cultural definitions are dependent on biopolitical, authoritarian sources22 23.
Foucault translated the concept of governmentality in an architectural framework describing several architectural devices that were to provide an analytical space in which information transfer broke down all
19 Carl Death. ‘‘Counter-conduct: a Foucauldian analytics of protest’’, Social Movement Studies: Journal of Social, Cultural and Political Protest. Vol. 9, No. 3 (2010)
20 Foucault 2007 21 Ibid. p 198 22 Erin Bishop, ‘’Neglected resistance: Counter-conducts and neoliberal governmentality through risk in International Relations’’, Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2014), pp 229-251
23 Frank Furedi, ‘’The only thing we have to fear is the ‘culture of fear’ itself’’, Spiked, (2007) pp 1-11
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barriers between public and private24. The breaking of such barriers allowed the authority to have access to any information about the inhabitants of those spaces. According to Thomas Lemke this type of access usually engages with information that the governance seeks and is prepared to uncover25. The invigilation mechanism would in this case be strongly dependent on discourse delaminated by the governance. Institutions which utilise architecture to attain such invigilatory authorities are, as Foucault mentioned: hospitals, prisons, schools and military barracks. Their concept was based on allowing appropriate accessibility of knowledge flow. In the Soviet atmosphere of Communist Poland the governmentality aimed at producing a biopolitical strategy that would change the peasant body into a docile soldier-like existence based on a new ethical framework of a worker. Foucault’s term ‘’Biopolitical’’, in this context, will mean a strategy aiming to transgress the borders between ideology and the body and internalise the principles of fear and risk of not being a Soviet worker. The raison d’être of which would be to propagate a source of labour and progress for the whole Soviet Union. All the Communist people would change into what Alexander Zinoviev referred to as: ‘’homo-sovieticus’’26. As Vaclav Havel pointed out in his essays on truth, the modality of life dictated by the Soviet hegemony was one of a ‘’lie’’27. Havel claims that the biopower of Soviet oppression was aimed at controlling all the aspects of the human condition, from its political or economic manifestation in the public realm to the innermost private spaces28. This was policed by agents, collaborating with the Communist government making sure that the flow of the body was in compliance with the stream directed by the Soviets. Acts of Counter-conduct were in this case unacceptable as they implied pursuing a different agenda allowing the self to become an autonomous, fluid identity. Nicolas Rose would argue that this was a way to understand one’s own self and its formation and act upon own desires as opposed to the Soviet ethos29. To achieve this, as argued by Jane Tooke, governance acts on and through citizens30. Architecture was one of the mechanisms that was supposed to foster the hegemonic intentions of crushing the indigenous culture of Eastern Europe and imposing a new, Communist way of life.
The authorities of the Soviet Union treated all attempts of individualisation or non-normative conduct as possible signs of a brewing revolt or at least dissent. This phenomenon was observed and noted by Foucault in
24 Foucault 2012 25 Thomas Lemke, ‘’The birth of bio-politics: Michel Foucault’s lecture at the college de France on neo-liberal governmentality’’, Economy and Society, Vol. 30 No. 2 (2001) pp 190 – 207
26 Zinoviev 1986 27 Vaclav Havel, Living in Truth: 22 Essays (London: Faber & Faber, 1990)
28 Michal Pietniczka, ‘’Zezania byłego esbeka - minuta po minucie’’ Gazeta.pl; Wiadomosci (August 2006) available:
29 Nikolas Rose, Governing the soul; the shaping of the private self (London: Free Association Books, 1999)
30 Jane Tooke, ‘’Spaces for community involvement: processes of disciplining and appropriation’’, Space and Polity, Vol. 7, No. 3 (2003) pp 233-246
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his lecture at the College du France on 1 March 197831. The soviet body implied a normalisation of life which was not explicitly part of the medico-juridical continuum but it was understood as law and enforced by the gaze of the governmentality (as elaborated in Rose32). To be part of the Soviet empire was to be immersed in fear. This fear was rooted in a sense of totality of the unstable judgements that emerged from a hidden, but evidently present, authority.
In 1975 in ‘Discipline and Punish’ Foucault wrote on the significance of space in the exercise of power33. He mentioned specific architecture and urban fabrics that enable the most economically efficient ways to control and discipline. These would lie in opposition to the nature of the heterotopias that demand exclusion. Foucault mentioned prisons such as the Panoptic prison (an idea developed by Jeremy Bentham), schools, barracks, hospitals and a city in plague in which all the inhabitants of the urban fabric were to police one another in order to contain the disease. His description of domination in the spaces described in the text was based on their capacity to enable invigilation or, in other words, knowledge transfer of the inhabitant34. This would give the inhabitants of the environment a sensation of apparent liberty at the same time as maintaining a level of control through surveillance. A deep understanding of the individual was instrumental in developing a mechanism that would work for the governmentality enforcing its order at the same time as creating an illusion of caring for the self. This was the principle of pastoral power in a secular state. Margo Huxley notes that this was the governance’s way of manipulating the knowledge flow to control the individualisation of te self35. Foucault suggests ‘’discipline organises an analytical space’’36.
Soviet waters In many cases use of space was policed37. Examples of those were the territories subdued by the Soviet Union in the 20th Century which were designed to create a being thinking only in terms of the eastern ideology38. The political philosophy of the East was meant to ensure the development of a quasi-scientific understanding of the ‘’anatomo-politics of the human body’’ as the base for the assertion of ‘’biopower’’39. At the time, in the spirit of modernism, the placement of production above all other aspects of life was particularly seductive.
31 Foucault 2007
32 Nikolas Rose, Powers of Freedom; reframing political thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)
33 Foucault 2012 34 Ibid. 35 Margo Huxley, ‘’Space and Government: Governmentality and Geography’’, Geography Compass, Vol. 2, No. 5 (2008) pp 1635-1658
36 Foucault 2012 37 Michal Pietniczka, ‘’Zezania byłego esbeka - minuta po minucie’’ Gazeta.pl; Wiadomosci (August 2006) available:
38 Anne Applebaum, Iron Curtain: The crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956 (London: Penguin Books, 2012)
39 Michel Foucault, History of sexuality 1: An introduction (London: Penguin Books, 1981)
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Experiments were managed by Aleksej Gastev in the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 20th Century. Gastev studied the way muscles contract whilst undergoing the act of production in an effort to find the most efficient motions that waste no energy or time40. Gastev was following Frederich Taylor in his investigations, exploring scientific ways to improve the processes of conducting work. According to Catherine Cooke on 6 November 1917 the Bolshevik forces called a meeting of influential Russian artists such as: Vsevolod Meyerkhold, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Aleksander Blok41. They were asked what their contribution to the revolution will be. The response was to change art and architecture to enable the ideology of Soviet governance to penetrate into the mentality and bodies of ordinary people. This was later translated into direct guidance of conducting art in Poland and Eastern European states42.
The propaganda machine, infused with a new breath of support, was shifting to accommodate new theories of behaviourism and cognition. Lavrentiev and Yuri Nasarov draw from the scientific development of constructivism and claim that forms were used to change mentalities of people43. To illustrate their point they quote Novitski, a dignitary in the Soviet world of art: ‘’With the methods of applied art we will bring about the active ideological class war, we will renew life, increase the quality of industrial production and improve the taste of the working classes44.’’
The deconstruction of classes and a rearrangement of new disciplinary mechanisms produced a perfect opportunity to create a new condition of power. A condition which had pastoral qualities and could be achieved by creating a new type of narrative in conveying its operating mechanisms via scientific means.
The government strived to change the mentality of the citizens to produce ideal workers, or as Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Zinovyev, a Soviet expatriate and scholar, referred to them: ‘’homo-sovieticus’’45. This new construct would be forged from the weak flesh of the peasant and unite the proletariat of the world, shedding the constraints of inequality46. The Soviet government wanted to produce a collective of docile citizens who would follow commands and at the same time sending out conflicting information about its mechanisms disallowing the definition of a coherent opposition. Any attempt at non-productivity was Counter-conductive to Taylorism and it could be argued that, in the Soviet Union, it could lead to persecution.
40 Zenovia Sochor, ‘’Soviet Ttaylorism revisited’’, Soviet Studies, Vol. 33, No. 2, (1981) pp 246 – 264
41 Catherine Cooke, Russian avant-garde; theories of art, architecture and the city (London: Academy Editions, 1995)
42 Karina Janik and Maria Wachala-Skindzier, Teatr w Nowej Hucie (Krakow: Muzeum Historyczne Miasta Krakowa, 2013)
43 Alexander N. Lavrentiev and Yuri V. Nasarov, Russian Design; Traditions and Experiment 1920-1990 (London: Academy Editions, 1995)
44 Ibid. p47 45 Zinoviev 1986 46 Applebaum 2012 9
The construct of the homo-sovieticus was an oddly defined feature of the state47. Zinovyev characterised it to nurture a great deal of pride of belonging to a collective but, at the same time, lack of trust. The construct was a conscientious worker who followed orders but complained about authority. Every characteristic named by Zinovyev is contradicted as though the being had at least two personae. According to Zinovyev:
Evolution-wise the Homosos is not decadent. On the contrary, he is the highest product of civilisation. He is superman. He is universal. If need be, he can commit any frightfulness. Where it is possible, he can possess every virtue. There are no secrets which he cannot explain. There are no problems which he cannot solve. He is naive and simple. He is vacuous. He is omniscient and all-pervasive. He is replete with wisdom. He is a particle of the universe that bears the whole universe within itself. He is ready for anything and anyone. He is even ready for the best. He awaits it, although he doesn’t believe in it. He hopes for the worst. He is nothing, that is to say everything. He is God, pretending to be the Devil. He is the Devil, pretending to be God. He is every man.48
To give into the biopolitical attempts of the governance and allow one’s own mentality and body to be attuned to the ideology of the nation was the appropriate conduct. To have become the Soviet construct: the homo- sovieticus, the ideal modern worker was the assumed prerogative. To not be a man submerged in a Soviet collective was enough to counter the intent of the Communist governance and thus would be subject to investigation. Since the legislative framework was so undefined, the line between conduct and dissent was hard to define. Because of this, dissent itself could have been located anywhere. It created an affect of non- linearity of the definition of power and fear from punishment for an unwilling crime, even a soft and fluid act of Counter-conduct could have been considered actionable. The only consistency was the aim of the propaganda to incentivise work.
A book called: ‘Architektura Polska, 1950-1951’ published in 1953 on architectural designs in Poland between 1950 and 1951 compares an disorderly rural dwelling with the propositions of new, clean Soviet cities49. The architectural drawings are accompanied by photos of smiling school children in uniforms and happy urban dwellers spending their time in cities erected by Communists. Those photos are entitled: ‘’The future citizens of the Republic of Poland in one of the many kindergartens of Nowa Huta’’ and ‘’Worker Jozef Zych, one of the first inhabitants of Nowa Huta’’. This was part of a machine aimed at convincing Polish citizens to internalise the propaganda of Soviet hegemony and become ‘’homo-sovieticus’’. The representatives of the new race were not even to think of Counter-conduct, they were to be aiming at achieving production goals within a framework set up by Soviet philosophy. The aimless, buoyant nature of the peasant was to be streamlined into a calculated hard production process. Each homo-sovieticus had a very precise role to play in the city. In most cases this role involved a nearby factory. Going beyond or against the current was implicitly forbidden.
47 Zinoviev 1986 48 Ibid. p262 49 Bohdan Garlinski, Architektura Polska 1950-1951 (Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Techniczne, 1953)
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Fig.1 Worker Jozef Zych, one of the first inhabitants of Nowa Huta (image extracted from: Gryckowski, 1953)
This notion of appropriate conduct was streamlined by Stalinism50. Architecture was submerged in this culture of control and was also employed to create the ‘’homo-sovieticus’’51. The intent of the designed environment was to drown out all attempts of producing a heterotopia for Counter-conduct and only think of work.
This affect of confusion was most prevalent in what Alexander Paperny calls ‘’Culture II’’ which, in his opinion, is the maturation of Soviet governance52. Culture II, according to Paperny, had a regal nature. Stalin constructed a totalitarian regime and controlled the nation as he pleased. A sample of his terror was his involvement in the Palace of the Soviets competition which occurred in 193353. Many international architects and those from Soviet Russia took part but the decision to choose the new headquarters of the communist world was not as easy task. According to Emil Wierbicki the conclusion came from Stalin himself who picked Boris Iofan’s proposition and gave him assistants so that the end result would become an amalgamation of all the architectural propositions54. The result was a mimicry of a classical architectural language taken from the Hellenistic age and the strategic compositions developed in constructivism to manipulate the flow of crowds. The building would look classical but would also have the apparent capacity to change its inhabitants, down to the positions of their bodies.
According to Hazem Ziada, architecture was to literally change the bodies of the Soviet citizens55. Ziada’s argument is based on a comparison between the philosophy of a Soviet theatrical director, Meyerhold and the aforementioned Palace of the Soviets, which was preceded by a series of curved ramps. Ziada argues that the geometry of the approach was intended to force the bodies of the people walking into the edifice to adopt a new and reformed or corrected body posture appropriate for the modern Soviet man. The concept of the role of architecture in determining the behaviour, the identity and even the posture of its inhabitant was a popular idea in those times. It opened a whole gateway for quasi-scientific investigations in order to develop a strategy for biomechanics that would result in arriving with the most efficient spatial design, suitable for Taylorism.
The new worker was to be: punctual, hard - working, clean–living and dependable56. This was the theoretical mechanisation of the peasant body that was thrown into a disciplined rhythm. The reality of the efforts of the Stalinists and their agents was however different. The cities were inhabited by people torn from their homes
50 Vladimir Paperny, Architecture in the age of Stalin: culture two (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)
51 Applebaum 2012 52 Paperny 2002 53 Leonard Tomaszewski, ‘’Styl przyszlej architektury Sovieckiej’’, Architektura i Budownictwo, Vol. 9 (1933)
54 Emil Wierbicki, ‘’Palac sowietow w moskwie’’ Architekture i Budownictwo, Vol. 12 (1934)
55 Hazem Ziada, ‘’Undulating grounds, undisciplined bodies: the Soviet Rationalists and Kineasthesis of revolutionary crowds’’, The Journal of Architecture, Vol. 18, No. 4, (2013)
56 James Cracraft, Architectures of Russian identity: 1500 to the present (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003)
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to live in a space that was not intended in any way to accommodate their previous life-styles. The whole design philosophy of the nation was based on creating an environment for a ‘’company town’’ aiding the work of a nearby factory that the city was to foster.
This type of radical centralised planning was socially and economically revolutionary for the working class57. The future of Soviet Russia was explained in a Soviet schoolbook: ‘’Every future city will be a workers village near a factory’’58.
Polish irregularity
Fig.2 Location of Nowa Huta in Europe in the context of the Iron curtain
The Polish culture, before the Second World War, was characterised as diverse and accepting of a strong individual standpoint.59 It has also been characterised as chaotic in the light of the nation having suffered the destruction of the First World War. The attitude towards authority in the context of the inter-War period is presented very clearly in an article from 1936 where a Polish architect is presenting his opinion about the apparent disorder in a newly formed city called Gdynia. Quoting Dabrowski, ‘’people are imperfect and it’s difficult to demand an ideal, especially in the chaos of the re-birth of a country60’’.
This atmosphere of a relaxed approach to obligations and coordination was also prevalent in Crakow which Nowa Huta was erected adjacent to. Crakow was described by Szyszko-Bohusz, in 1928, in the following manner: the composition of space was left without any authority, it can be characterised by complete absolution and chaos of the street image. This leads itself to an intensely despondent and negative understanding of the artistic culture of modern Crakow61
Lech Niemojewski in 1937 attempted to diagnose the problem of the overwhelming rejection of authority in the Crakowian Power/Knowledge networks and claims that it seems to have been infused with attitudes of Expressionism and Viennese Secession62. This was a philosophy that assumed subversion or rebellion to
57 Ibid. 58 Quoted in Ibid. 59 S.K.Dabrowski, ‘’Architektura Gdyni’’, Architektura i Budownictwo, Vol. 5 (1936)
60 Ibid. p150 61 S. Lunkiewicz, Szyszko-Bohusz, ‘’Walka o kulture architektoniczna krakowa’’, Architektura i Budownictwo, Vol. 5 (1928) p 147
62 Niemojewski 1937, p139 12
academic trends. He also notes characteristics of Red Viennese architecture in the city which was signified by monumentalism63. According to Niemojewski:
Thanks to the […] cult of national historicism and vernacular art, the Crakowian scene has fostered an interesting artistic conglomeration, which can be characterised as expressionist (and therefore Secession). This quality afforded a huge degree of individuality ripe for the best64.
The area of Crakow was seen as leading the Polish nation in creativity and intellectualism. It was also a site associated with the regal and episcopal heritage of the nation. It could be understood that Crakow signifies what the Polish people felt comfortable with: the church, creativity and negation of authority.
In the case of this clash, the normative Soviet ideology to which the Polish were subject in the post-Second World War period must have felt uncomfortable. Suddenly the most natural states to conduct culture and one’s own life were forbidden and gained an enemy in the public eye in the form of Communist Police. In spite of this, the government’s claim of supporting the individual as well as the welfare of the nation, the practicalities of life proved otherwise. In an atmosphere defined by a lack of definition of power and its deep intensity any abnormal (non-Soviet) behaviour had to hide beyond the public realm. If appropriate conduct of an eager worker requires deep tension of the body to be sustained, then relaxation to a comfortable state might have to withdraw into a heterotopia as it could be seen as unacceptable.
Nowa Huta
In the turmoil of the period after the Second World War, a six year plan was set up by the new Polish Government to rebuild ruined cities65. In 1949 the Communist government also adopted a plan of developing Nowa Huta deploying a design of Tadeusz Ptaszycki and his team66. It was a completely new city designed and built entirely in accordance with Soviet guidelines in the manner of Soviet Taylorism serving a nearby industry. The city was built outside Cracow as a counterweight to its historical, intellectual and religious associations. The modern alternative was built with all the functional amenities that a city requires but without a church. It
63 Wojciech Lesnikowski, ‘’East European modernism : architecture in Czechoslovakia Hungary & Poland between the wars’’ (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996)
64 Lech Niemojewski, ‘‘Architektura Polska wczoraj i dzis’’, Architektura i Budownictwo, Vol. 4 & 5 (1937) p 139
65 Mark Dorrian, ‘‘Falling upon Warsaw: the shadow of the Palace of Culture’’ Journal of Architecture, Vol. 15, No. 1. (2010) pp 95 -105
66 Jacek Slawinski and Leszek Sibila (ed.), Nowa Huta, przeszlosc i wizja (Krakow: Muzeum Historyczne Miasta Krakowa, 2008)
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was to be a city without a history – the future of Communism in Poland, another frontier for ‘’homo- sovieticus’’.
Fig.3 Own archive; Central square of Nowa Huta
The initial concept for the city was inherently social. It was to supply the steelworkers with homes. Spaces in Nowa Huta were designed to develop their physical strength, health and mental abilities. It was to be a hygienic city without dark alleyways67. The urban grid in Nowa Huta is transparent in the layout of streets and squares68. The streets are wide so every inhabitant has access to sun and fresh air. The streets are long so the destination is usually visible, making the distance appear shorter than it actually is, streamlining the journey. The main square was designed to anchor five streets radiating from it, and overlooked by the administrative building of the nearby factory and dominated by municipal buildings. It was the clarity of circulation and apparent proximity to the factory that gave the city identity.
The process of erecting the buildings, as demanded by the design intention, was not as strict as one might expect for a ‘’new Eldorado’’69. Those parts of the design which were more culturally expressive, and not strictly necessary to the immediate functioning of the factory, had to be abandoned. Amongst the buildings which were never built were: the main House of Culture (that was to be the geometric and cultural centre of the city), the administrative buildings, the theatre in the centre of the city, the sports facilities and the large obelisk. The overall shape of the master-plan had to be altered to adapt to the lack of availability of architectural drawings and political demands for speedy erections. The master-plan for the most of the intervention was eventually dropped in 1956 around the time of the economic crisis70. The functions of the spaces had to be changed to much less luxurious than initially envisioned by the architects which meant that the designs of architectural detailing had to be revised over time.
The biopolitical means of infusing ideology into the minds and bodies of the inhabitants of Nowa Huta were very precise. Design decisions to incentivise people to become ‘’better’’ could not have been made without a clear image of the ‘’better’’ in the designers mind. The design decisions were all made to lead people into becoming more effective workers and contributors to the communist collective.
At first glance, the city’s urban fabric can be understood as an analytical space. The design intent was certainly to accommodate transparency in understanding the architectural language of Nowa Huta71. According to Paperny the development of Stalinism came in two waves72, the intellectual development in the first one
67 Ibid. 68 Katherine Lebow, ‘Unfinished Utopia’ (London: Cornell University Press, 2013)
69 Ibid. 70 Slawinski and Sibila 2008 71 Ibid. 72 Paperny 2002 14
encompassed increasing the literacy of the public. In the second wave the newly literate citizens took control of the nation in the name of equal opportunities. According to Paperny they were prepared to read simple texts but not interpret subtle details of art and architecture. This inspired the preference of a simple and easily understandable architectural language that did not foster the development of a rich spatial imagination. Nowa Huta did not challenge people; it presented itself in its spatial entirety determining a very narrow way of thinking of spaces. This formed a metaphorical prison where the only knowledge is that presented officially in the public realm. It was an extremity of a philosophy that directed the inhabitant to use space according to a very strict prescriptions producing highly regimented, overcoded73, hierarchical relationships between the spaces and human activity. This was to drown out the heterotopian tendencies producing a type of people that would not even think of rebelling against the regime as they would not even know of a possible alternative.
Nowa Huta resembles Foucault’s descriptions of a military camp where all the avenues were wide and the most important ones (as well as the doorways facing them) were visible from one point in the town74. Furthermore, the archival documentation concerning architecture from archive V in Cracow suggest that the infrastructure in Nowa Huta was designed to accommodate the presence of military personnel75. One of the drawings showing a section through an underground corridor explains the engineering side of the project. The drawing clearly shows the dispersion and magnitude of forces acting upon a corridor from several vehicles, amongst them: tractor T80. The signifier of the tractor and the way in which it was represented in the drawing suggest that the tractor was in fact a Soviet tank T80. Those provisions proved beneficial when the Communist army marched into and through the city presenting its strength in a parade along the long avenues. This happened every time the military were set a task to neutralise any attempts of revolt or even to supress cases of Counter-conduct. The possibility of their comfortable appearance fostered by these long and wide corridors made the inhabitants ever aware of the disciplining capacities of the Communist governance.
The most ideologically infused aspect about Nowa Huta was the lack of clear definition of spaces. The urban grid provides a wide range of open spaces, all of them over-scaled, with little variation and little definition. The individual residential quarters were also not differentiated. The whole city was monotone and personalisation was forbidden due to bureaucratic reasons. If everyone has the same space, the self is the same as the rest. This disallowed the development of a stable concern for one’s own self as it would not be distinct enough to be cared for separately from the collective.
Another aspect of the city infusing ideology in its inhabitants was the long vista from the central square which directed people’s gaze into the gates of the steelworks reminding them about work. This also means that the
73 Gilez Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A thousand Plateaus (New York: Routledge, 1994)
74 Foucault 2012 75 Jan Gryckowski, ‘’Projekt wstepny i techniczny; Tunel miedzy budynkami Z i S – CANH’’ (unpublished material, Archive V in Cracow, signature: BDMNM;895, 1953)
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journey to the workplace seemed shorter. The whole city was designed on a factory belt principle76. The narrative of life was clearly modulated and presented to its inhabitants. As they would wake up they would have breakfast, leave with their children, drop them off in school, follow to a bus stop and carry on to work. This design move was to navigate the workers going from their homes, via Central Square to the workplace as mentioned by an interviewee I spoke with. As he says:
[A citizen] would leave their house to [the factory], dropped off their child to kindergarten, and walked whilst reading (…), to the busses which took off from Central Square (…)77
This mechanism operated like clockwork and there was no disruption to it. Not following its prescription and tempo would mean exclusion and no access to income which would imply no place in Nowa Huta. The importance of this stream of workers was communicated by representative buildings on both ends of the street leading from Central Square to the factory.
The first attempt to instil ideology into the minds of new Nowa Huta dwellers was to give them dormitory style housing to inhabit in anticipation for their eventual resettlement to a more established and hygienic flat78. This could take months or even years when they would lose a sense of personal space autonomous from the collective of workers. When relocated to a permanent residence they would be introduced to an environment where the main entrance to their residential unit would be accessible from an internal courtyard. The inhabitation was allocated on the basis of ranking in the nearby steelworks factory so a safe space to socialise was shared within the strata of hierarchy in the factory. Such a strategy enforced the organisational patterns of the steelworks into the social/residential space giving both a similar character.
In terms of the built environment, the architectural form of communist designs was imposed with a general rule that forbade subsequent changes to the spatial relations of a dwelling, even if the changes might have provided a more logical solution for the inhabitant79. This does not seem to have been dictated by health and safety considerations nor the function of the façade. Even changes entirely confined to the interior were seen as acts of Counter-conduct. It was only after the change in government in 1990 to a democratic one that the architects and inhabitants of buildings were allowed to manage their own spaces.
The main problems that seemed most pressing in the basic organisation of a dwelling were the layouts of the rooms. All the flats had a central corridor leading into spaces that had windows facing random vistas. There was no strategy towards environmental design nor was there any care for comfort. In terms of architectural detailing the relationships between flats was reinforced with a lack of separation in the acoustic transmission.
76 Interview with one of the inhabitants of Nowa Huta, A Supporter of the Communists (2015) 77 Ibid. 78 Interview with an inhabitant of Nowa Huta. A Hostess in a Hotel for Workers, (2014) 79 Marysia Galbraith, ‘’Between East and West: Geographic Metaphors of Identity in Poland’’, Ethos , Vol. 32 No 1. (2004)
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This was most likely a case of settling for architectural solutions, dictated by lack of resources but those poor choices aided the feeling of a lack of privacy.
The intimate dwelling spaces seemed merely an extension of the public. The safest places that people could find shelter from the Soviet hegemony were those, in which the Communists were not expected to be found. The atheism of the government assumed that no Communist collaborators should attend Catholic mass as it would create a suspicious image of allegiance to an opposing power. Catholic churches became a raft for people seeking escape from the governments gaze. It was another space in which conduct was orchestrated, but not in the way which was prescribed by the Soviets. This is why Nowa Huta was initially designed without a church.
The concept of legibility aiding the analytical gaze in the city was however already obscured by the omnipresent paranoia associated with the Cold War80. The city’s design presents a balance of measures to enforce transparency and facilitate defensiveness. The latter came in the form of ease of military deployment on the streets above and an underground network of corridors and bunkers as well as car parks designed in case of a military attack.
Fig.4 Own archive; Entrances to underground structures
Heterotopian spaces in Nowa Huta were difficult to form but not impossible.
Moreover, the design of Nowa Huta, with a binary distribution of courtyards and public streets unwittingly created opportunities for areas of non-visibility which opposed the character of the transparent, wide avenues. All those spaces lacked the possibility to be effectively policed, which weakened the programme of designed intent. This opened opportunities to use those spaces as bubbling heterotopias for Counter-conduct specific to Nowa Huta. Unorchestrated, those places were ideal for exploring the internal desires of the body, denied by the ‘’homo-sovieticus’’. Away from the gaze of the Communist Police, such spaces fostered unhygienic indulgences which were non-productive and did not lead to the fulfilment of Soviet goals.
Fig.5 The initial urban Master-plan for the city (see Garlinski, 1953)
Invigilation for a collaborator with the Communists in these conditions was aided by design decisions. The lack of capacity to police the whole space made it imperative to employ a policing system which went beyond architecture. An example of this is a situation in the Eastern bloc in the second half of the 20th century after World War 2 (1945-1990). The Soviet hegemonic forces left a Trojan horse in the environment of Poland in the form of secret collaborators (TW)81. The collaborators worked undercover to gather information of Counter-
80 Slawinski and Sibila 2008 81 Applebaum 2012 17
conduct and report them to higher strata in the chain of command. Those mechanisms of control dominated each individual and their lives by a prevalent and omnipresent feeling of surveillance. As Foucault wrote: ‘’visibility is a trap (…) he [the prisoner of the panopticon] is seen but he does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject in communication’’82. This was to ensure the waters of the Soviet spaces were used according with their initial design intent and no acts of wasteful Counter-conduct would arise. The basis of this mechanism was the possibility of being invigilated by a secret collaborator. The TWs were recruited from the public and reported any relevant information about unlawful activities conducted by fellow citizens. In this reality, public space-use was inhibited through fear of exposure. The access of a TW to even the most private spaces was encouraged by the government to enrich the information that might be used in blackmail or other means of control83. In this situation the act of place-making that excluded the TW was unacceptable from the point of view of the government. Michel Foucault was also victimised by the collaborators when in 1959 he had to leave Poland after the collaborator movement obtained evidence about his tendencies of producing heterotopian spaces84.
Producing heterotopias for counter-conduct was implicitly unlawful. No spaces for encounter in the entire country could be open or explicit as interaction with another citizen could have turned out to be one with a TW. So long as there was open access to a space no suspicious activity (any activity that was distanced from production in the steelworks) could take place through risk of being reported to the authorities.
The Communists were convinced of their righteousness however, in spite of this, in 1954 reports of riots were noted in the new socialist city of Nowa Huta. The men from one of the hotels for workers of a steelworks factory, divided from their spouses according to architectural intent, tried to get into the women’s quarters85. The Taylorist plan was to determine the level of intimate relationships of the workers. The spatial organisation of the design seemed to have been working against the basic instincts of its inhabitants. On one occasion a plot was devised to allow the entrance of one of the husbands into a female hotel for workers. The plan backfired when the husband arrived late at the agreed location and a member of the Communist police force (milicjant) had already taken his place. The people involved were punished with a ticket that is still on display in Nowa Huta.
The Church
Catholicism always played a significant role in the culture of the Polish nation. It was part of the cultural code deeply embedded in the identity of Polish citizens. Most of the older generation of Polish people associate
82 Foucault 2012, p 200 83 Pietniczka 2006 84 Krzysztof Tomasik, GejErEl: Mniejszosci sexualne PRLu (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej, 2012)
85 Madro Justyna, ‘’Robotnicza Nowa Huta karą dla inteligenckiego Krakowa?’’ (November 2012), available:
themselves as being practicing Catholics and treat their religion as inherent to being a Polish patriot86. The architectural history of Poland was described by leading Polish Scholars of the 30s and 40s as contingent to the presence of the Catholic Church in the nation. In 1937 Jan Zachwatkowicz wrote a brief description of the history of Polish architecture. He notes that the first sacred buildings, which were erected in Poland after the nation was baptised, were monasteries which were erected in France in the period87. Those were of the Baroque style and catered for the Jesuit denomination.
In 1927 Jaroslaw Wojciechowski described the church building as a public space for gathering with a very specific program88. This went beyond a mere strategy of urban planning. Most Polish people attended mass every week and surrounded by most of the inhabitants of their neighbourhood they listened to the teachings of the preacher. This instilled the conviction of the righteousness of the pastoral power to be supporting the concern for one’s own self. The soul mediated the care for the afterlife which clearly benefited the members of the parish. According to Foucault, pastoral power relies on convincing the subject that it is in his best interest to subjugate themselves89. The social aspect of the gathering made it also an important tool in channelling knowledge flows. To miss the mass would be to cut oneself off from knowledge circulation. This opened up the Polish people to be attuned of the secular mechanisms of Foucault’s secular soul elaborated upon in ‘Discipline and Punish’ to the teachings and leadership of the pastor90. In 20th century Poland, this gave the Church a prominent position in the context of weak governance and gave the society its resilience.
In a letter to the Communist prime-minister, Bierut, the Chief ideologist Berman wrote:
The Church is a great obstacle to us because in it are concentrated the philosophical bases of ideological reaction, which it ceaselessly relays to the masses. In the popular consciousness, it is the bilwakr of Polish tradition and culture, the most complete expression of ‘Polishness’. This traditional understanding of patriotism is the greatest strength of the Church, even stronger and more powerful than the magic ritual. The Church is the natural source of opposition, both ideological and philosophical. 91
The two establishments: the Church and the Communist government, always contested against one another. The underground opposition, that organised manifestations against the political regime, was always aided by the clergy. The Church remained autonomous and its relationships with the West, through the Vatican, helped
86 Tony Kemp-Welch, ‘’Dethroning Stalin’’, Europe and Asia studies, Vol. 58, No. 8. (2006); Extract from a note from Berman J. -communist activist; to the Communist party representative: Bierut B
87 Jan Zachwatkowicz, ‘’Zarys dziejow architektury Polskiej’’ Architektura i Budownictwo, Vol. 5 (1937) p103
88 Jaroslaw Wojciechowski,’’Kosciol jako budowla’’ Architektura i Budownictwo, Vol. 8 (1927)
89 Foucault 2007 90 Foucault 2012 91 Kemp-Welch (2006) p1263 extract from: archiwum akt nowych oddzial 4 (pzpr) p112 t.26 pp213-220 19
to abolish the Communist structures. Invigilation and censorship in Communist Poland was so effective that the copies of liberal newspapers eg: ‘Kultura’ had to be printed in Paris, outside of the communist territory, and smuggled back into the country to be ‘‘passed from hand to hand’’ and ‘‘discussed in private meetings in living rooms or churches’’92. Their political character created a new public dimension in their usage.
It could be argued that churches were places where people could explore unproductive desires of understanding the continuity of their own identity via culture93. This did not lead to any gains for the Soviet hegemony and was considered counter-conductive. Sacred spaces were not accepted by the Communists. Such spaces had to be organised informally at the beginning of the existence of the city in undercover in flats or outside of it. In spite of their efforts, sacred spaces became a refuge for people wanting to separate themselves from the grey reality.
One of the most famous cases of Counter-conduct in the architectural fabric of Poland was associated with building a church: ‘‘the Lords Ark’’ in Nowa Huta. Before the building was erected, the inhabitants of Nowa Huta left the city every Sunday to nearby villages or private flats to partake in mass94. The absence of a church in the city came to be difficult to accept considering that the church was one of the few public places where Polish people could meet and gather legally, in spite of it being frowned upon. There was no explicit legal procedure against building a church however the government targeted the clergy with accusations of financial fraud or using the sacred spaces for economic gain.95 It could be argued that this was an argument that was to appeal to the Catholic congregation, which could recognise the reference to the biblical fury of Christ in the temple dominated by a market. The building was also denied on the grounds that the site was to be used for another school in Nowa Huta. The biopolitics96 of the anticlerical movement was to create a continuous regulatory corrective mechanism that was to push the church into the realm of the unnecessary.
The Lord’s Ark
Fig.6 Location of the Lords Ark within the context of the urban grid of contemporary Nowa Huta
92 Ibid. p 42 93 Kemp-Welch 2006 94 Marian Kordaszewski, Arka Pana (Krakow: wydawnictwo Benedyktynow, 2013)
95 Anna Porebska (ed.) ‘’Prezydium Dzielnicowej Rady Narodowej; Nowa Huta w Krakowie w sprawie parafii Rzymsko- Katolickiej’’ (unpublished material, Archive IV in Cracow, signature: SW.II-920/1/69, 1969) 96 Foucault 1981 20
In 1957 the Arch-Bishop Eugeniusz Baziak prepared the soil for the new church and a cross was set up as a sign of solidarity with the clergy97. In 1959 the government withdrew its permit to build the church and in 1960 factory workers were ordered to dismount the cross installation. At that point violent riots broke out to protect the cross. Eventually the authorities caved in and a church was built in 1977 according to the design by architect Władysław Pietrzyk. For the citizens, fighting for the cross and the future church must have been a beacon of a different kind of public space, a promise of a place where they could meet outside of the constraints of the Communist oppression.
The building was erected when the leading architectural style in Poland was soc-modernism98 which was a rejection of traditional city-planning99. It assumed landscaping of spaces between buildings that gave the public very little definition. The design of the ‘’Lord’s Ark’’ on the other hand incorporated deep care for the interface between the interiority of the building and its exteriority. A necessity of that sacred space, and indeed any church that was designed in Poland, demanded that events unveiling inside would have an opportunity to spill onto the public forecourt rather than ending on the elevation of the building. This level of site-specificity of the building was unusual in European modernist planning.
The success of this particular space lies in its intimate and apparently secluded character. The promenade towards the church begins with its sight from a far. The edifice stands on one of the main arteries of the city. The unconventional form of the building distinguishes it from all other rectangular residential units. The view marks the street as the first space in their layering leading into the chapel in the churches depths. This street is occupied by the congregation every year on Easter Friday when most of the parish attends a procession through the city.
The architectural language of the edifice has an unusual form, certainly in the sea of modernism100 in that area of Nowa Huta. This was, in itself counter-conductive to the urban grid of the city. This design move made the church stand out as a landmark, a point of orientation that relates to the dogma of designs for the sacred in Inter-War Poland. This move took away the significance of the centralised planning of the city and territorialises the space from which the church can be seen. It signified a relationship of the land to the Vatican as opposed to the Soviets. The careful balance of hierarchies in the city was faced with competition and as a result became weaker than what was intended in the initial model from 1951.
Fig.7 Own archive; 2nd staircase of the Forecourt
97 Edward Baniak, ‘’O Kosciele, Arka Pana’’, (April 2005), available:
98 Magdalena Smaga (ed.), Modernizm w Nowej Hucie (Krakow: Muzeum Historyczne Miasta Krakowa, 2012)
99 Adrian Forty. Concrete and culture: a material history (London: Reaktion, 2012)
100 Smaga 2012 21
The second space is the forecourt preceding the entrance to the church. This space caters for large masses of people during specific religious ceremonies organised annually such as Easter Sunday. It is denoted by the landing of two grand staircases leading through the main doorways into the interiority of the edifice. The first is leading into the interior of the church whereas the second is leading into the administrative part of the building. The feeling of belonging in that space was accessible to those that were intimate with the knowledge generated by the Catholic Church. Signs and symbols that are intuitive to the members of the congregation which imply a type of behaviour would be unclear to intruders. An example of this is the altar above the upper landing of the second staircase (Fig.7) which suggests that that area was only to be used by the clergy.
The journey into the interior of the architectural intervention follows along the first staircase which implies directionality to the entrance. This is partially misleading as access to the church is open from all sides. This would only be known to members of the congregation that attended mass the interior of the building, from which the presence of alternate routes is apparent.
Fig.8 Own archive; ‘’The Lord’s Ark’’ church
The main doorway, located on the first floor landing of the first staircase, leads into a large interior space designed to cater for the needs of a ceremony directed at a large part of the congregation, this is the third space. The space is used every Sunday for other religious ceremonies. The plan is open and the majority of the place-making, apart from the raised altar is determined solely by the usual Polish classroom layout of the seating. The acoustic conditions in that space are designed to amplify the perception of the traditional prolonged singing during a catholic ceremony reflecting the acoustic waves that would normally be lost at the back of the audience. This creates a sensation of being enveloped by the sound, protected by the collectivity of the congregation. Those conditions also meant that one could whisper to another without being eavesdropped upon. The visual continuity and possibility of exiting the space from all sides creates a sensation of an informal transition between inside and outside. Entering the third space from the second is almost unnoticeable for a member of the congregation.
The design of the external staircases, which lead into the first floor, conceals the entrance into the lower chapel located on ground floor. The promenade into it makes it seem latent in the depths of the edifice, secured by a layering of spaces in spite of being accessible on the periphery of the church. The feeling of security dimmed the fear of being taken outside of the social contract which heterotopian spaces usually create. The space can hold a hundred people comfortably and its scale enables concentration and a more personal relation to the people within it.
The building organises a long promenade preceding entrance into the chapel. Its interior is territorialised by the congregation. It could be argued that because of those two reasons and the intimacy of the scale of the space it must have been incredibly difficult to conceal secret identities. This made the chapel, the final space
22
ideal for the purposes of organising of counter-conduct that was used by the Solidarity movement against the Communist government and TWs to organise marches and protests.
Fig.9 Own archive; The Chapel
Furthermore, the design decisions in ‘’the Lord’s Ark’’ are to conjure up images of a clear symbolism. This simplistic interpretation was to be understandable by everyone and enabled the entirety of the Polish nation to contribute to the erection of the church. The Catholic Church, through virtues of addressing the same power and knowledge network as the Communists, engaged in simplifying messages to compete for the attention of Polish people. The messages sent out by the Church were equally as understandable as the Communist propaganda. The church was no exception. The aggregate in the concrete used in the edifice consists of pebbles gathered from river beds by the Polish congregation and sent to Nowa Huta101. This was to symbolise the earth. The windows emerging from the concrete base were to symbolise river water and the arched roof was to be ‘’the Lord’s Ark’’ that docked in the city, ‘’where it was needed the most’’. (Words used by an inhabitant of Nowa Huta, discussing the church) The feeling of contribution created a sensation of ownership of the church and the spaces within it. It united the congregation of Poland against the will of the Communist government. The church belonged to the people rather than the state.
Fig.10 Own archive; Concrete with river-bed rocks as aggregate
The Lords Ark was Foucault’s metaphorical ‘‘Ship of Fools’’ sailing on the waters of an overly structured environment. The church ‘’made its appearance in the landscape’’ of Nowa Huta, ‘’and it was not long before it occupied a privileged place there’’102 as a stand; formalising the fluid heterotopia that was an inversion of the environment around it, a negation of the Communist’s governance without which it would not be as prominent. Similarly if not for the contextuality of the city (being surrounded by rural and urban fabrics with a distinctive hierarchical relationship towards the sacred) ‘’The Lord’s Ark’’ would not have been built.
Erecting and using the church was an architectural manifestation of counter-conduct against the government built by the people who did not want to be governed, as Foucault would have put it: ‘’by these people and by these means’’103. The architectural language of the building seems to follow an idea of countering the conduct of the Communists, placing emphasis on the metaphysical or as Deleuze and Guattari would name it: molecular104 (and therefore non-producing) aspects of people lives. Its unconventional form symbolises the
101 Kordaszewski 2013 102 Foucault 2009, p 8 103 Michel Foucault, The politics of Truth (Los Angeles: Semiotext, 2007) p 201
104 Deleuze and Guattari 1994
23
disagreement between the government and its citizens. The building was designed against the guidelines of the Soviet architectural merit. It exposed the desire of the Polish citizens to maintain a relationship with the intangible. Through this it became a specific argument against the Soviet regime in Poland. The erection of the Church was, in this sense, a formal account of counter-conduct, countering the hegemonic Soviet construct of the ‘’homo-sovieticus’’.
It could be argued that the layering of the spaces leading into the intimate chapel of the church cut it from the fear of stumbling onto TW’s. The prolonged anticipation of approaching the building on route towards it created a buffer zone between the Church and the Communists. The space became a raft for communication where anti-Communist thought was not surveyed. In this sense, it was extraordinary from the point of view of functionalist modernism and Structuralist Communism. The church was a non-productive space, an anachronism that had no apparent program. It was a deviation of the outside rigour. This made it ideal for creating heterotopias within as even though they were ripped from the social contract, they were secured by that of a different power. Counter-conduct was in this sense easier to fulfil because it encompassed a mere choice of logic of a different order rather than a completely creative act. The ethical leap from the mentality of a Communist subject to that of a noncompliant citizen was in many cases facilitated by the adoption of a different hegemony – that of the Vatican. Heterotopias allowed people to liberate themselves from the Soviet orchestration of ‘‘homo-sovieticus’’ and potentially explore their inner desires or inspire the production of such spaces in the city fabric. In the case of the church the space allowed an exploration of a cultural continuity under a literal pastoral reign. The churches open conflict with the Communist governance amplified the success of the building.
It could also be argued that producing heterotopias in the Communist spaces was a form of challenging the Communist everyday displaying noncompliance with the governmentality. This case of Counter-conduct was one to protect the cultural continuity of a nation which rejected the Soviet collectivisation. The Counter- conduct cases against the spatial organisation prescribed by the Soviets and the collaboration with the church shows the attractiveness of a literal pastoral power over the influence of the Communist regime. The Church in Nowa Huta was like a ‘’Ship of Fools’’ – a space for heterotopic rejection from Communist society. ‘’The Lord’s Ark’’ church in Nowa Huta was used by Solidarity, the movement that brought down Communism in 1980.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work could not have been undertaken without the support of Professor Stephen Kite from Cardiff University and Professor Chris Smith from the University of Sydney. It would also not have been undertaken without the initiative and support of Dr. Carl Death, Dr. Louiza Odysseos and Dr. Helle Malmvig. My research would also not be possible without the assistance of the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University. I would also like to thank the historians at the Museum of History in Cracow in the Nowa Huta branch as well as the people working in the Archives in Cracow which lent me their resources.
TABLE OF FIGURES
Fig.1 ‘Worker Jozef Zych, one of the first inhabitants of Nowa Huta’
Fig.2 Location of Nowa Huta in Europe in the context of the Iron curtain
Fig.3 Own archive; Central square of Nowa Huta
Fig.4 Own archive; Entrances to underground structures
Fig.5 The initial urban Master-plan for the city
Fig.6 Location of the Lords Ark within the context of the urban grid of contemporary Nowa Huta
Fig.7 Own archive; 2nd staircase of the Forecourt
Fig.8 Own archive; The Lord’s Ark church
Fig.9 Own archive; The Chapel
Fig.10 Own archive; Concrete with river-bed rocks as aggregate
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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE I am a Ph.D. candidate, studying at the Welsh School of Architecture at Cardiff University. My current position includes lecturing at the Kent School of Architecture at the University of Kent and engaging with teaching in the Welsh School of Architecture. Previous work includes a research post investigating the architectural integration of technologies with potential capacity to reduce energy consumption as well as working in an architect’s office.
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